When I heard that the guy who played TC in the original Magnum P.I. died I watched some old reruns of the show. As an 80s baby I remember watching Magnum P.I., Night Rider, and A-Team with my dad when I was a kid. Thankfully in those days it was still ok to have shows that appealed to men. Of course plenty of women liked those shows generally to see the male leads, but that is what you want. As I call the James Bond appeal. Get men to watch for the action and women to watch for the handsome male lead. On the flip side, if you make a female led action movie with an attractive woman who isn't an annoying feminist (basically the opposite of that stupid Charlies Angels movie) I'd be inclined to watch.
But it further reinforced why I tend to watch stuff from 2014 and prior and really need some heavy recommendations to try shows that come out today. Also back then they had shows like Dynasty, Falcon Crest, and Knots Landing to appeal to women. Just makes me realize how entertainment would change overnight if they could simply acknowledge that men and women tend to enjoy different things or maybe they watch the same thing for different reasons. There is a reason as a kid my brother and I loved G.I. Joe and Thundercats while my sister was into Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake.
Some anime recs for those who enjoy the types of shows OP mentioned:
Gunsmith Cats
Black Lagoon
Golgo 13
Cowboy Bebop
Cool thanks! Been trying to get into more anime. Still re watching Fist of the North Star. First anime I ever watched was Robotech. Cowboy Bebop was good but I haven’t seen it in years and need to rewatch. Can’t believe Netflix butchered it. I’ll check out the other ones. I enjoyed Sword Art Online. Any recommendations like that?
Sword Art Online is part of what I call the "Aniplex Trio", three big anime from Aniplex that dominated 2011. The other two were:
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Fate/Zero
Madoka looks cutesy but it gets dark. The movie's plot sucked, but it has one of the best gun fights in anime.
Fate/Zero combines the epic duels for the fate of the universe of Highlander with the plotting and backstabbing of Game of Thrones.
Also, for anime about people stuck in an online game:
It's more of a mystery anime than an action anime.
Patrician taste, but I'd not actually recommend it to many. It made the dubious decision to throw its plot to the nine winds and seven seas, and getting the whole story requires watching anime, playing video games, reading LNs, and reading manga, and none of them overlap or properly summarize information from the others.
Yeah, it's fairly linear so the "watch order" is obvious, but it's still far more complicated to fully view than most media, if you wind up liking the story.
It's got some great music though. Don't need a full understanding to enjoy that.
EDIT: Haseo >>> Kite or Tsukasa, but SIGN > G.U.
That's why I only recommended SIGN.
It's where .hack begins, so no knowledge of the rest of .hack is required.
And unlike Roots, it wraps up its main plot by the end.
I cannot recommend Fate Zero enough. It's probably the anime I watched the most because I love the story, the intrigue, the grandness of it all. I played the Fate VN way, way before somewhere around 2009, 2010 so when I saw Zero I was hyped.
Thanks!!!
If you're looking for ones about going to another world (isekai), some of the well known ones I've enjoyed are Rising of the Shield Hero, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Overlord, and Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest. None are perfect, but all are pretty damn enjoyable, in my opinion.
And if you want semi-parodies of the genre, I really enjoyed Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious, and KonoSuba. Fun mix of humor and poking fun at the genre, while still also being that genre. Skeleton Knight in Another World is also pretty funny, and is basically a counterpoint to Overlord, which played it mostly straight.
And just general anime, Chivalry of a Failed Knight is one of my favorites. Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon is alright and, while not an isekai, is still sort of similar to SAO, I'd say. The Magi series is also fun, although in my opinion it has a few stinker episodes too, and some of the characters are annoying, but it's still fun overall. Also, has some surprisingly based moments, like bankers trying to destroy countries with the evil of fiat currency...not even kidding.
Lastly, for something completely different, Spy X Family; it's an action comedy about a spy who needs to put together a fake family for his assignment, so it's part action, part wholesome family stuff. Pretty hilarious in places, too.
Thank you!
Anime has been fairly consistent in providing shows like that, I'd also add:
Megalobox (for soundtrack alone even though the story is great too)
Gunsmith Cats, just for the humor. "He's just seeing you in your underwear, you don't have to marry him."
As much as I like that genre of movie/show you're talking about, it's hard to not watch them with a modern eye.
When they came out conservative Christianity was the dominant paradigm, and the idea that some masculine character could save the world and get the girl without wanting to settle down and marry her was outside the respectable norm. Your parents might say something like "OK James Bond gets to do that but you aren't James Bond so it's a bad idea for you to do that." So the appeal of that media was obviously to tear down something that at the time was dominant and make the younger generation want something that was harmful for all but perhaps an extremely small percentage of them.
Now that that paradigm is dead, in many cases those very same people involved in those movies/shows speak of how "inappropriate" they are to modern audiences. Well perhaps, but if that's true, it was also true at the time they were made. The letter-writing campaigns to yank the shows from the air ended up being part of their marketing strategy. Why did they not care then? Because at the time the purpose was to be "inappropriate". Only now that it's "inappropriate" in a way that doesn't serve the dominant paradigm which they also serve is that a problem.
And I say this as someone who still regularly watches TNG, near 30 years after it ended. It was propaganda for a different age, which has long since ended. The shows served their purpose at the time, but since our enemies have no honor they don't receive their due respect for a job well done.
I think there is something to be said about "power fantasies beyond the the scope of reality." Rather than an attempt at tearing at the primary paradigm, it was an appeal to a different set of instincts we bury to live in a better society.
Because every man wishes he was James Bond, or Leonidas, or even Walter White (at times), but any well adjusted person knows he cannot be and simply satiates the urge by the consumption.
You aren't wrong about it often being used as propaganda, but much of this stuff is appealing to a very base level human desire that we aren't allowed to or given much chance to fulfill in a civilized manner. Which is why there is a raw joy extracted from the tiny smidge of fantasy that is healthy.
I agree that those are instincts buried deep inside us, which is why the propaganda is so dangerous. And I don't think the instincts are bad, though to the extent they aren't cultivated in our society (which is a problem, and something many of these Hollywood types encouraged), encouraging the young to engage in such behaviors without them having the opportunity to develop and hone those skills is dangerous.
Societies that wanted its men to have that skill trained and tested it into them. And then (presumably, because to not do this would be a bad idea) provided useful outlets for its men to use those skills. Not every man can be Leonidas, but every man can be Patriarch of his family. And have mastery in a trade or profession. And use that "will to power" to create something unique, be that a thriving family or something physical.
Or we could, except anyone who tried being Patriarch would find themselves in jail or divorce court, or both. Mastery of a trade is becoming less important than conforming to the various policies and procedures required to perform the trade, which often stand in the way of someone unleashing their mastery.
And yet he will still crave to leave his family to die gloriously in battle with the boys somewhere. Crave to feel like the suavest coolest man in the room that turns every woman's head. You can't be a proper Patriarch of your own little family while also spending your time cultivating those particular skills, nor should you.
Mid life crisis' are older than most of the Hollywood machine, and those are what those desires and instincts become when they are completely buried and unfluffed. A man who has by all means done everything right for his life and family, still having to compensate with his mortality and baser instincts telling him he has not.
The problem is that discipline and control are shunned by the greater culture. People are constantly bombarded by retarded messages like "be yourself" and "do whatever makes you happy" without the ability to properly parse short term rushes from long term happiness. So they lack the ability to properly find contentment in these minor bits of escapism, and instead find themselves in it and drop everything to emulate it.
We might not be able to live the life of Bond or die in valour like Leonidas, but we can identify as an attack helicopter just like Airwolf.
I hate when I see those show creators apologizing for those shows. Like the creator of Friends. I’ve seen young woke journalists attack TNG because they lived in a society that moved beyond issues of race.
As for the family aspect the older I get the more I thoroughly enjoy shows like Leave It to Beaver, Family Ties, Cosby Show, Little House on the Prairie, and others because of the strong family aspect.
I still enjoy shows like Magnum PI or A-Team but thankfully I had a good mother and father who’ve been married almost 50 years so I had an example of what the ideal was. Finding a good woman and settling down
Holy shit, you resurrected a memory of my uncle from the brink of being forgotten forever. He used to babysit me on weekends, and I can remember him saying 'Come watch some Magnum, it'll put hairs on your chest!'
Thanks for that.
Thanks, uncle.
Anytime
Dallas and Dynasty were the shit! Evening soap operas were great. Dramas and action shows and mysteries, Dukes of Hazard, Magnum PI, Hunter, Miami Vice, MacGyver, 21 Jump Street, Murder She Wrote, Beauty and the Beast, Simon and Simon, Spencer for Higher, Scarecrow and Mrs. King...so many more.
The comedies were funny and varied from frilly to black humor. It was great. The 90s focused on most wide-appeal generic shit like Full House and Friends, wiping out any fucking variety and it's been shit ever since.
Oh don’t get me wrong I plan to binge watch. Dallas and Dynasty. I just noticed as a kid my female relatives tended to like those shows. I love Remington Steele
I loved the intrigue and cat fighting. It wasn't just some woman going "oh, you looked at me, slap" stand around talking like they do today. There was actual shit going down in the soaps. It was less-bloody version of season 1 game of thrones, people died, but not so bloody.
I believe the line is "Women want him. Men want to be him."
That’s it! I couldn’t remember.
Gargoyles.
Holy shit. Positive male role models and healthy relationships for boys to learn about. Even the concept of the eldest son learning how to become a man and a leader.
Mandatory fucking viewing for children.
I remember when that was on I was watching other stuff but I do want to watch it
Since it's got Worf, Riker, Data, and Trois doing voicework I would pretend the show was a holodeck simulation they were all playing.
TC is dead?
Yea. Died in a car crash last week